Despite the very short notice, about 150 people packed in to Lecture Room #1 of University College London's Cruciform Building on Friday night to attend a meeting organised by FIPR with FFII on the subject of software patents.

Richard Stallman, renowned as the founder of the GNU project and "father of Free Software", spoke for an hour and twenty minutes on "The Dangers of Software Patents". This was followed by a chance for representatives of the political parties to state their positions.

The question of software patents is expected to return to the European Parliament for second reading either late this year or early next year.

Contact for enquiries:
FIPR:
Ian Brown
Director
Foundation for Information Policy Research
 ian@fipr.org
07970 164 526 (from outside the UK: +44 7970 164 526)

FFII:
James Heald
UK Co-ordinator
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
 j.heald@ffii.org.uk
0778910 7539

The Register has a report here:
 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/25/stallman_lecture/

and Indymedia.ie has a nice piece on last night's talk in Dublin here:
 http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=65203

Audio for Dublin coming soon.

Audio for London at
 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucesjph/RMS-UCL-May04.ogg

Stallman's speech was substantially similar to the one he gave two years
ago in Cambridge:
 http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/stallman-patents.html
(The main difference was more focus on the most current developments;
and little mention of the BT hyperlink patent, which was very topical in
2002)

Headline summaries of the party positions:

Labour:
"Need for certainty, and to avoid a legislative vacuum"


UKIP:
"More than usually patently mad - software patents fudge is a
minefield"


Conservative:
"Conservative MEPs support the European Commission and the
Council's intention to ensure that the EU reinforces its patent regime
and excludes generic software and business methods".


Lib Dems:
"A wide definition of patentability in the field of software
development is not in the public interest".

"The wording of the current draft Directive can be interpreted
as allowing a wider definition of patentability than we would wish to
see permitted."


Greens:
"The Green party of England and Wales does not yet have
an official position (awaiting conference debate and decision); Green
party MEPs have taken the view that there should be legal harmonisation
in order to clearly limit patents on software".

It had been hoped to field a full political panel in person at the
event, but both Labour and Conservative parties felt that the issue was
too involved for anybody but their lead MEP on the issue to take part;
and unfortunately Arlene McCarthy MEP (Lab) had a prior engagement in
Manchester, and Malcolm Harbour MEP (Con) was busy campaigning in
Birmingham.

However, Shahrar Ali, Green party Euro-election candidate, and Neil
Jerram, London Lib Dems, were able to attend in person, and
transcriptions of their speeches are attached.

Damian Hockney of UKIP had also planned to be there, but was sabotaged
when his car broke down at Watford Gap, on his way back from an
appearance the night before on the BBC's Question Time.

background information:

1. The Foundation for Information Policy Research
( http://www.fipr.org) is an independent body that studies the
interaction between information technology and society. Its goal is to
identify technical developments with significant social impact,
commission and undertaken research into public policy alternatives, and
promote public understanding and dialogue between technologists and
policy-makers in the UK and Europe.

2. FFII-UK ( http://www.ffii.org.uk/) is the UK campaign group of
the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), a
Europe-wide non-profit association registered in Munich. FFII campaigns
to promote competition and innovation in the field of software
development. We seek a positive environment for the development of
information goods, based on copyright, free competition, and open
standards. More than 700 companies and 50,000 registered supporters
have entrusted the FFII to act as their public voice in the area of
exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing; and the
FFII/Eurolinux petition against software patents now has over 300,000
signatories.